Off Somewhere

Off Somewhere

stories

Z. Z. Boone

Whitepoint Press

San Pedro, California

Copyright © 2015 by Z. Z. Boone

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A Whitepoint Press First Edition 2015

Cover design by Monique Carbajal

Cover image © Lightspring/Shutterstock.com

ISBN - 13: 978-0-9898971-8-1

ISBN - 10: 0989897184

Published by Whitepoint Press

Distributed by Smashwords

For Tricia

Contents

Off Somewhere

The Mensch

Moving

Kat

Sympathy Grades

Not Cool

Wakefield

Hot

Neutral Ground

Strapless

Hitched

Lifeline

Pitching

Mom the Poet

Fat

Selling Cheese

Unblemished

The Buddy System

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Off Somewhere

Off Somewhere

She tells me to come right away, that my father has finally come unwired. I've gotten calls like this from Mother before—some coming in the middle of the night, many following my father's ability to find his way into the locked liquor cabinet—but none where she seemed this frantic. I'm afraid he could hurt himself, she'd say, or He's on another bender. Now she says,Please! I think he might kill me!

It's two-thirty in the afternoon, and I'm in my office at the university preparing to administer a final examination in forty-five minutes. The course: British Folk Figures: Real and Imagined. I can leave afterward, at 4:30, but something tells me I need to go now. I get Justine, the department secretary, to cover for me; I get in my car and drive the forty minutes toward their house in Brampton. It's April 1976. Darryl Sittler has recently scored an NHL record ten goals for our Maple Leafs, and wherever you go people are abuzz about the coming summer Olympics in Montreal.

My father—who has always insisted that everyone, his only son included, call him Willie—began losing touch a few years earlier. Little things. Has anybody seen my slippers? and he'd be wearing them. Gradually it got more serious. He'd be driving and forget where he was going or even where he was. I suggested to Mother that maybe we needed to consider the possibility of placing him in a treatment facility. We're a family, she reminded me, not a bunch of Polynesians who drop their unwanted into a volcano.

That was around the time his wandering began. In the early morning hours Mother would get a call from a neighbor saying, Don't worry, Willie's over here with us eating toast. Once a patrolman picked him up, the moon still out and him still dressed in pajamas, walking up the street away from the house. He claimed he was on his way to the airport. After that, Mother—in clear violation of local fire codes—had a key-operated deadbolt installed on the inside of the front door. She hid the key in the pocket of her terry cloth robe, which she religiously hung from a hook on their bedroom door.

When I get to the house, she's sitting on the porch swing waiting. It's mild, but she's wearing a pea-green, ankle-length winter coat that looks like it swallowed her whole. I park by the curb, but the woman is apparently in no mood to waste time. Before I've even taken the keys from the ignition, she's standing outside my car, hands plunged in her deep coat pockets, lips already moving as if she's warming them up.

How is he? I ask.

Who knows? she shrugs. He's off somewhere.

By off somewhere she means his mind is in a different place. He's currently not among the living. In fact, my father has almost never been off somewhere, not in the literal sense, not unless you count going to work, or maybe driving down to Florida for two endless weeks every summer when we had the money.

We sit on the porch swing, its red cushions worn and faded, while a TV laugh-track blasts from inside.

He's starting to become violent, she tells me.

It seems the story is this: Mother, fifteen years younger than Willie, had just made them both tea. He was sitting in the living room watching the television when she brought in the tray.

You know who'd get a kick out of this? he said, pointing to the television. Dell. Why don't you call him up and ask him over.

My mother reminded him—very calmly, very patiently according to her—that Dell no longer lived in our neighborhood and hadn't for years.

Your father turned into a madman, she says. Called me a liar and slapped my hand as I was trying to serve him. Burned my wrist and broke one of my best Royal Doulton cups. She takes her left hand out of her coat pocket and shows me her wrist which she's bandaged to great dramatic effect. Then he started crying like an infant. I thought I was going to have to call the police.

I suggest going inside, but Mother says she's more comfortable waiting out here. Give me a hoot when you have him calmed down, she tells me, and I can't help but think of that alligator wrestler we all saw in Orlando when I was a kid.

I find him in the living room, sitting in his leather-seated rocker, eyes trained on the TV. There's a tea stain on the beige carpet, but all other signs of his alleged outburst have been cleaned up.

Hey, Dell, he calls happily.

It's me, Willie. Trevor.

Dell, I might mention, refers to Delray Kilgore, this kid who used to live across the street from us. The boy Willie wished was his. Delray Kilgore, a year younger than I and about the same size, was a natural athlete, a terrific student, a handsome guy despite a reddish-brown birthmark the size of an oak leaf on the left side of his face. He and my dad, himself a former standout in high school track, would go to sporting events together (including a father/son golf tournament sponsored by the church,) while I—with no regrets—would sit in my room, read Dick Turpin, Highwayman, help my mother clean house, and listen to rock on WKBW from Buffalo, New York.

Delray's own father was an out-of-work tool and dye maker who was drunk most nights. During the day he was this hard-working guy who did odd jobs for anybody who needed him. He'd shovel walks and rake leaves and repair broken windows. He was remarkably timid and seldom spoke to anyone unless it was necessary. Rumor had it that before his wife made the choice to move on, Mr. Kilgore (a title even the adults used to refer to him) had beaten her into a coma.

I knew Delray Kilgore—the real Delray Kilgore—better than either of my parents did. He was a snake. He would use his charm to suck up to teachers, then disparage them—to the joy of his friends—behind their backs. He would coerce girls into doing things they hadn't really planned on. He would borrow your only suit jacket, return it with some unidentifiable stain on the sleeve, and inform you it was like that when he put it on.

The summer Delray graduated from high school, his father landed a decent job in Ottawa. Even though they were less than five hours away, we never heard from either of them again.

In the winter of 1973, Willie retired from his job as a roofer. Actually, retired may not be the right word. No one would hire him. His mind was pretty into playing tricks at that point, and he'd show up at the wrong home, or forget his tools, or arrive wearing his polished wingtip shoes. For almost forty years prior he worked for someone else, always on hourly wage. He had good years with overtime and bad years with little work. It was Mother, head receptionist at St. Mary's Presbyterian for twenty hours a week, who kept our domestic lives flowing somewhat smoothly.

This past November, she sold their car, worried that he would search the house, find the keys, and try to drive. Besides, she told me, there's nowhere I can't walk to.

Our living room remains virtually unchanged. Perhaps the white lace doily under the lamp on the sideboard has been replaced by a pink one, but that's pretty much the extent.

Mother says you had a bit of a blowup, I say.

His eyes never stray from the television screen. She's just mad because I wanted to go fishing with Andy and Barney. She thought I should go into Floyd's and get a haircut.

He's referring to The Andy Griffith Show which he watches daily in rerun. In fact, his entire life at this point seems centered around this nonsense: The Partridge Family and I Dream of Jeannie and Car 54, Where Are You? All past their prime, all being shown in what seems like an endless loop on some station pulled in from the States.

Most people living in 1976 are unfamiliar with the term Alzheimer's disease. This is especially true of our family physician, Dr. Robert (Buffalo Bob) Fleming, whom I take my dad to see that following weekend. Buffalo Bob is easily 300 pounds and smells like a wet woolen sweater. He takes my father's blood pressure and asks him a series of questions: Do you know where you are? (To which my father answers, With you.) How old are you? (My father tells him he's one hundred, and then laughs aloud.) "Can you name three cities? (My father offers Bedrock, Mayberry, and Hooterville.)

He's got some age-related dementia, Buffalo Bob tells me as Dad flips through Humpty Dumpty magazine in the waiting room. He's stuck in what we know as 'second childhood'.

What can we do for him?

Think of him like a sleepwalker, Buffalo Bob says. Nothing abrupt. Nothing shocking. But you do want to try and ease him back into reality.

How?

Anytime he starts moving into Fantasyland, make it your job to lead him out of there.

In other words...?

In other words, Buffalo Bob says as he lights a cigarette, don't let him get away with that happy horseshit.

When we get outside, Dad becomes uneasy. These days he's not usually out of the house, away from the TV, for this long. He looks around the parking lot, looks at me, finally says, I don't see where I parked the car.

We're right here, I tell him. I drove.

He laughs at this. You drove, he says. That's a rich one. A thirteen-year old driving.

I persuade him into the passenger side, and he goes along like one teenage boy taking a dare from another. I close his door, then get in on the driver's side.

He's not gonna be very happy, he smiles.

Who?

Whoever owns this car.

I tell him the car belongs to me, and as further proof I slide my driver's license from my wallet and hand it across to him. He studies it a moment, the smile still on his face, then he indicates the photo.

Who's this?

That's me, I tell him.

He laughs. Good one, Dell, he says. Except this guy is as old as I am.

Look at me, I say, and he does. I'm Trevor. Your son.

His lips part, but he says nothing. I twist my rearview mirror in his direction.

Now look up here, I tell him. The person in the mirror? That's you.

He looks at his reflection, turns his head, then adjusts the mirror up and down. His smile is gone now, and he slumps into his seat like a child who's just been scolded. I take my license and return it, fix my mirror, pull out of the parking lot.

Neither of us says another word for the entire ride home.

Mother doubts many things, but not the word of a physician. She's found a red crayon, and she's cut up a bunch of the cardboard boxes she keeps in the basement. After dinner, with Dad again in watching TV, she sits at the kitchen table while I wash dishes and begins to make up signs to hang around the house. One reads: YOU ARE A 70+ YEAR OLD MAN!!! and another reads: I AM YOUR WIFE, NOT YOUR MOTHER!!! The one she's just finished reads: DO NOT ASK ME ABOUT DELL KILGORE!!! HE MOVED AWAY!!!

She looks up at me. Should I add, For all I know he's dead?

Why would you do that? I ask, as I put away the gravy boat.

She shrugs. Reality is reality.

A minute later, when I begin to clean the stovetop, she says, You bear a certain amount of the blame for this.

I look over at her. She's lettering another sign, not looking over, not making eye contact.

I mean, here you are. Thirty years old. Still unmarried and with no prospects as far as I know. Maybe if you'd have given him a grandchild or two he'd have somebody to invest in.

Unbelievable, I say, mostly to myself.

And then you move away, leaving the entire burden on my back.

I'm less than an hour away.

An hour's an eternity to a hanging man, she says. Then she holds up another sign and asks what I think. It says: THE PEOPLE ON TV ARE NOT REAL!!! WE ARE!!!

Back in my apartment in Toronto the call comes through. I left Brampton on Monday morning, now it's Thursday night around eight. Justine, the department secretary, is in the kitchen making spaghetti. We've been an item now for the past two months, and, according to Justine, her husband is having a simultaneous affair with his dental hygienist. She's ten years older than I, not particularly attractive, a pound or two overweight. But she's warm and responsive and discrete and when she's not here I wish she was.

I've got one more day of office hours, a stack of finals to grade, a pot of coffee on perc, a bottle of white wine chilling for later on.

On the phone, Mother is in tears. Tells me she's in the hospital emergency room and my father is in jail. Just calm down, I say, and tell me what you're talking about.

He hit me, she sobs. Bloodied my nose. I had no choice but to call the police.

Mother is being dramatic—I'm sure her bloody nose can be treated with a few tissues and a tilted-back head—but the thought of my father sitting in a jail cell without a clue as to what's going on is too much to fathom.

I'm on my way, I tell her.

Your father? Justine asks after I hang up. I nod. She smiles, grabs her pocketbook. Remember to turn off the stove and dump the spaghetti before you leave, she tells me.

My father is being held at the 22nd Division Police Station on Hurontario Street. But he's not in a holding cell. Like a lost child, he's behind the desk seated next to the officer on duty. I almost expect to see him eating ice cream and wearing the policeman's hat. When I identify myself to the officer, my dad whispers, "He's